American Go E-Journal

Andrew Kay Top Teacher in South London: The second South London kyu players’ teaching day and tournament took place at the Croydon Quaker Meeting House, where nineteen students were taught in the morning by Andrew Kay, Alex Rix, Tim Hunt and Alison Bexfield. In the afternoon there was a three round tournament. Kay won the teachers’ tournament with three wins.

UK Stays Second in C-League: UK remains second behind Bulgaria in the C-League. Bulgaria has won two more boards than the UK. The match against Ireland ended 3:1 and links to the games can be found on the main PGETC page.- compiled/edited by Amy Su, based on reports on theBGA website

Go makes an appearance in the Netflix series “Borgia,” which is not to be confused with the similar series “The Borgias.” In the 29th minute of the third episode (“1497″) of the third season, Cesare Borgia , the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503), uses “the game of strategy from the Orient, go,” to give a plan for his conquest of northern Italian states. He uses a thick go board with legs and colored glass beads to demonstrate his point. “The goal is to add as few men as possible; out-thinking your opponent rather than out-fighting him.” The winner does not eradicate his opponent, but rather entices him to surrender.- Ted Terpstra, based on a tip from Mark Gilston

Jian Xiao 4D (left) took the annual NOVA Slate & Shell Open on December 13 with a 4-0 record in a field of 18 players. “Bill Cobb of Slate & Shell generously donated books as prizes for the event,” reports TD Gurujeet Khalsa. Other undefeated players were Gurujeet Khalsa 6K at 3-0 and Deirdre Golash 12K with a 4-0 score.photo at right: Bill Cobb, with S&S prizes; photos courtesy Gurujeet Khalsa

Round 4 action on December 14 began with two games that would draw the line between the medal winners and non-winners in the women’s section. Both players from Chinese Taipei came up short: Joanne Missingham lost in just 111 moves to Kim Chaeyoung (Korea), while Cathy Chang narrowly lost to famed veteran Rui Naiwei of China; click here for the game commentary. In the afternoon, Rui Naiwei lost by half a point to Kim Chaeyoung who now goes on to play Yu Zhiying for the gold medal.

Chinese Taipei got off to a good start in the fourth round of the men’s team when Lin Li-Hsiang defeated eighteen-year old Chinese superstar Mi Yuting. Chinese Taipei’s upset hopes were dampened, however, when their leading player Chen Shih-Iuan lost a tightly fought game to China’s leading player Shi Yue on board one, and were then dashed when Tuo Jiaxi convincingly defeated Chang Che-Hao on board three. China now has four straight wins, and their remaining match is against North America. While China was struggling past Chinese Taipei, the North American team lost to the Korean team 0-3, so China’s chances of completing a clean sweep of all their matches when they play North America appear quite good.

Europe had no better luck against Japan than North America had against Korea. The Europeans fought hard, but Yuki Satoshi beat Fan Hui by a comfortable 7.5 points, Ida Atsushi beat Aleksandr Dinershteyn by a 14.5 points, and Seto Taiki beat Ilya Shikshin by resignation. Edited from longer reports on Ranka Online. Click here for the complete report on Round 4. photo: Huiren Yang (left) playing Alexandr Dinershteyn; photo by Ivan Vigano Game records are available on go4go.net; click here for latest SAWMG results.

by James Davies, Ranka OnlineUpdate: The US team beat Europe in the team match on December 13; see report and links below for details.
The morning event on the second day of the SportAccord World Mind Games on December 12 was the second round of the women’s double knockout. The outcome was victory for both Chinese and both Koreans. Choi Jeong needed less than two hours to defeat Natalia Kovaleva by a wide margin. In a somewhat closer game China’s rookie King Yu Zhiying defeated Japan’s Women’s Honinbo Fujisawa Rina. Japan’s Okuda Aya then bowed in resignation to China’s Rui Naiwei after a long ko fight, and Joanne Missingham (right), trailing by a fraction of a stone with only two one-point moves left to play, resigned to Kim Chaeyoung.

In the men’s team matches, Korea’s Kang Dongyoon fell to China’s Tuo Jiaxi on Board 3, followed by Korean youngster Na Hyun’s loss to Mi Yuting of China, clinching the round for China. Park Younghoon saved face for Korea by playing to a narrow but secure victory over China’s top rated Shi Yue.

The Chinese women did equally well in round 3 of the women’s competition in the afternoon, with Yu Zhiying prevailing over Choi Jeong and Rui Naiwei defeating Kim Chaeyoung by the same fractional margin by which Kim had won in the morning. Four games were also played in the losers’ bracket, with good results for Chinese Taipei and mixed results for the rest of the world: Fujisawa Rina defeated Natalia Kovaleva; Joanne Missingham defeated Okuda Aya; Chinese Taipei’s Cathy Chang defeated North America’s Irene Sha; and in an all-Russian game, Svetlana Shikshina defeated Dina Burdakova. The losers of these four games have now been eliminated. Only the two Chinese players remain undefeated, and they will meet each other in round 4.

China’s defending champion Tang Weixing 9p faced off against Korea’s secret weapon Kim Jiseok 9p (left) at the 2014 Samsung Cup finals on December 9 and 10 in Xi’an. Though Tang had a previous win and the home field advantage, Kim’s individual performance this year in international tournaments has been almost flawless with 15 wins and only 1 defeat. The result? Kim delighted Korean fans by defeating Tang 2-0 and giving Korea its first major international title since Lee Sedol 9p won the Samsung Cup in 2012. For more information about this year’s tournament including photos, game records, and preliminary commentary by An Younggil 8d, please visit Go Game Guru.–Younggil An, from a longer article on Go Game Guru; photo courtesy Go Game Guru. Edited by Annalia Linnan.

Russia: The Championship of Karelia finished on December 7 in Petrozavodsk with Vladimir Shvecov 3d in first, Dimitrij Kornev 4d in second, and Dmitrij Konovalov 2d in third. Romania: Mircea Nitu 11k (left) took the 2nd VolGo Cup on December 6 in Voluntary. Behind him were Sebastian State 11k in second and George Gigoi 14k in third. Lithuania: Also on December 7, Giedrius Tumelis 2d bested Andrius Petrauskas 3d at the Lithuanian Go Championship in Vilnius while Ernestas Romeika 1d came in third. – Annalia Linnan, based on reports from EuroGoTV, which include complete result tables and all the latest European go news; photo courtesy of EuroGoTV

by James Davies, Ranka Online
The first round of go competition at the 4th SportAccord World Mind Games on December 11 featured an epic encounter between the Korean and Japanese men’s teams, and a historic victory for a Russian woman. The Japan-Korea men’s match was close on all three boards. Yuki Satoshi (right) of Japan defeated Korea’s Park Younghun in a prolonged struggle on board one. In the battle between two young players on board two, Japan’s Ida Atsushi, 20, overplayed his advantage against Na Hyun, 19, by starting an unnecessary ko fight, in the course of which Na was able to revive his dead group and evened the score in the match at 1-1. All now depended on the outcome of the game between Seto Taiki of Japan and Korea’s Kang Dongyoon on board three, and the people following the action on the monitor screens in the adjoining room were held in suspense down to practically the last move, but after a grueling five and a half hours, Kang came up the winner by 4.5 points.

Meanwhile, the Chinese team of Shi Yue, Mi Yuting, and Tuo Jiaxi was dealing unmercifully with the European team of Fan Hui, Aleksandr Dinershteyn, and Ilya Shikshin. European stones died en masse on all three boards. The team from Chinese Taipei also blanked the North American team 3-0, although the game between Chen Shih-Iuan and Jiang Mingjiu on board one was quite close. Russia’s Natalia Kovaleva defeated Chinese Taipei’s Cathy Chang in the women’s individual competition.- adapted from a longer report on Ranka Online; photo by Ivan Vigano

The fourth SportAccord World Mind Games officially opened at an evening ceremony held on December 10 in the banquet hall of the V-Continent Beijing Parkview Wuzhou hotel near the Beijing International Conference Center, which is the competition venue. Thirty go players representing the best of China, Chinese Taipei, Europe, North America, Japan, and Korea will compete with each other December 11-17, rubbing shoulders with some of the world’s best bridge, chess, draughts, and xiangqi players. Counting all five disciplines, there are 150 contestants, drawn from nearly forty countries and territories on six continents. Click here for Ranka Online’s reports on the SAWMG’s Opening ceremony and draw and Players Converge on Beijing for the 4th SportAccord WorldMind Games.

Michael Redmond 9P’s gives a commentary (right) on the Round 1 game between France’s Fan Hui 2P and China’s Shi Yue 9P. “Shi Yue showed powerful fighting, starting with a center-oriented opening that developed into a big fight,” says Redmond. “Two early mistakes on Fan Hui’s part made this fight difficult for him.” Redmond also noted that “In the 1st round for women, Europe played well, got only one win out of it.”

Click on another insightful Redmond commentary, Dinershteyn-MiYuting_annotated.sgf, for an incredible game, in which Black opens with a 5-7 point play in each corner for his 1st four moves!

Andrew Kay Holds British Championship: November 29, Andrew Kay defeated Alex Kent to retain the British Championship by three games to nil. The game will be made available shortly, with commentary from Matthew Macfadyen.

Local Winner at Warwick: The Coventry Tournament at the University of Warwick had a local winner for the second year in a row. Philip Leung (5d) took first at the tournament organized by former winner Bruno Poltronieri. Second was Wu Ruizhu (5d) also from Warwick and third was Alison Bexfield from Letchworth. 32 players took part.

UK Youth Go team triumphs over Italy: The UK Youth Go team is one of 13 teams signed up to the European Youth Go Team Championship 2014/15. In the second round of matches, the UK team beat Italy on Sat. 29th November. Congratulations to the team for their 4-1 win, which places the UK currently 6th out of the 13 teams taking part. The next round is scheduled for Saturday 13 December.

Race for 2014 Youth Grand Prix reaches final month: December – the final month of the 2014 Youth Grand Prix. The three winners, who will receive cash prizes of either £50, £30 and £20, are predicted to be among four talented youths. There are still 3 tournaments in UK, with plenty of opportunities for other players to rise to the top.- compiled/edited by Amy Su, based on reports on the BGA website